difficult people

I am appalled at how many columns about dealing with difficult people at work advise going to HR. Unless HR in your organization has a track record for setting things right and maintaining confidentiality, It’s not likely that anything will be done, and you may get in serious trouble for being there.

Preposterous as this scenario may seem, I can tell you based on years of experience that tactics like this work better far better than more direct and businesslike approaches. I can’t guarantee that everything will go according to the script I’ve written here. The words may vary, but the basic idea, transparent as it may be, will work surprisingly well. Try it and see.

Emotional vampires strengths and weaknesses are driven by a single insatiable need. Their careers and the people they work with are merely the source for gratifying that need. Unlike normal people, they have little or no empathy. To keep from being drained, you must recognize people with personality disorders and understand them well enough to step into their world and step out of the pattern they expect. Here are the ones most likely to cause you trouble:

More often than not, honesty is the best policy. I am often amazed at how many other strategies and approaches people employ to deal with each other without first attempting to talk it out. But an honest dialogue with someone pushing your buttons continues to prove itself as one of the most effective strategies for bringing out the best in people at their worst.

Resolved: This year, do better dealing with bad behavior! Stay calm, stay focused, and be strategic around pushy, negative, distracting, disruptive, wishy washy, whiny and withdrawn people!. Today’s post is the second clip from the spoken word version of Dealing With People You Can’t Stand

Psychological projection is “a psychological defense mechanism where a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people.

Dealing with difficult people is a subject I have studied in depth, including over a thousand interviews to learn what worked and what didn’t work. I’ve got more than a few tricks up my sleeve, and in this post I’ll share some of them with you.